Cat on the Money Read online

  “You’re saying Azrael killed that woman. Oh, I don’t think…”

  “No. I’m saying she was in here. Or someone with the scent of the sea on them. The carpet wasn’t damp, and no smell there. Just around the safe. I don’t understand yet what happened.” He looked at Dulcie, his yellow eyes burning with challenge. “But we’ll find out.”

  Chapter Three

  The evening paper lay on the front porch of the white Cape Cod cottage, blocking Joe Grey’s cat door. Trotting up the steps, he glanced around to see if any neighbors were looking, then pawed the Gazette open to the front page, leaving damp paw marks across the newsprint.

  ACTRESS DEAD IN TEAROOM, MONEY MISSING.

  Pretending to pat at a bug, Joe read quickly:

  Little theater actress Frances Farrow, a resident of Phoenix, was found dead this morning in the tearoom of Otter Pine Inn, possibly from a heart attack. When officers searched the premises, they found over four thousand dollars missing from the safe. A connection has not been established. Miss Farrow did not work at Otter Pine Inn nor was she a guest. She was one of four women who remained in the village after competing as finalists in the Patty Rose look-alike contest. The only wound she sustained was a shallow abrasion and cut on the left side of the chest, where Miss Farrow apparently received a blow.

  In rare cases, Coroner John Bern told reporters, a blow in that area can jolt the electrical circuit of nerves in the heart that control contractions, and the heart stops. In such an occurrence, called commotio cordis, there is no evidence of damage to the heart. Police…

  Joe hadn’t finished reading when Clyde ’s yellow antique roadster pulled into the carport. Joe’s housemate swung out, took one look at his cat reading the paper on the front porch, and double-timed across the lawn, snatching the offending newsprint from under Joe in a blatant show of rudeness. “What are you doing reading in front of the neighbors!”

  Hissing, Joe lightly clawed Clyde ’s hand.

  “Stop it! Now look! Blood all over the cuff of my lab coat.”

  “One drop of blood. You already have grease on your sleeve.”

  There was no argument that Clyde, mentor to the village’s most expensive imported cars, was a fine master mechanic, but in Joe’s opinion, that lab coat was a gross affectation.

  “To say nothing,” Clyde continued, “of muddy pawprints trashing the front page!” He stared at the headline, then at Joe.

  “I see.” He read quickly. “Some woman has a heart attack, and in your insane feline mind, you decide it’s murder.”

  “She was thirty-some years old.”

  “It happens.”

  “Coroner doesn’t think that’s what happened,” Joe said. “Thinks it could have been a blow to the chest. Finish reading. The coroner…”

  Clyde read a few lines, then fixed Joe with a hard look. “The coroner says that kind of freak accident’s possible, and the newspaper blows it all out of proportion. Why can’t you…?”

  “And what about the empty safe? You have a handy explanation for that? What was she doing in there? She had to have broken in.” Glaring at Clyde, Joe pushed in through his cat door and leaped into his own tattered, overstuffed chair that no human wanted to touch. Curling up and closing his eyes, he ignored Clyde until he smelled dinner cooking. Then he beat it into the kitchen to sit on the table, watching Clyde make clam pasta.

  “Put in plenty of clams, I need my protein.”

  “Why? So you can track down some supposed killer?”

  “One of the contest finalists is dead. Four thousand dollars is missing from the inn’s safe, and the winner of the contest and her husband were scared out of their wits by the event. And you think I’m paranoid? And all of it mixed up with this stupid cat festival.”

  “The festival has no connection to the look-alike contest or to…”

  “It doesn’t? The four losers got involved in the cat festival-for the publicity and the perks. That’s a connection.” Joe Grey twitched a whisker. “Apparently all wanting to hit it big in show biz-and maybe one of them wants to hit it big at the bank, without bothering with show biz.”

  The back door rattled, the dog door swung in, and old Rube, the black Lab, shouldered through followed by the three family cats, wanting their suppers. As Clyde set the clam sauce on the back of the stove and began to open cans, Rube looked up at Joe wagging and grinning. Joe patted his nose with a soft paw. The cats smiled at Joe but kept their distance. Ever since he’d discovered he could speak, they hadn’t really trusted him.

  Neither Joe nor Dulcie knew why they were different. There were cats like them mentioned in obscure passages of Irish history, and in Celtic myth. And they were not alone. Azrael had likely sprung from the same ancestry-a fact that did not please Joe Grey.

  “He’s back,” he told Clyde. “The black tomcat. Lurking around the inn this morning before they took the body away.”

  “Azrael? Come on. Greeley and that cat are in Panama. Some black cat wanders by, and you…”

  “Dulcie saw him. And I smelled his stinking scent around the safe.”

  Clyde stopped dishing dog food, to look at Joe.

  “Ten safes emptied in the past week,” Joe reminded him.

  “You think Azrael and Greeley did those?” Clyde set the animal’s food on the floor. Washing his hands, he drained the spaghetti and dished up their dinners. Joe leaped onto the table. But they ate not speaking, Clyde reading the front page, Joe slurping up pasta as he went over the facts, trying out possible scenarios.

  All five finalists had spent a weekend at Otter Pine Inn for the judging. Say the ladies were in and out of the dining room and tearoom, and passing the office. One of them figures there’s a safe there, maybe moves the screen and spots it. Or maybe sees the manager come out with a money tray for the restaurant.

  She stays in the village after Alice wins the contest, gets involved in the cat festival gig-and hears about the other burglaries. Decides to ride on someone’s coat tails, use the festival as cover. Who knows what hidden talents those young women have besides song and dance? A little skill with the tumblers? She slips back into Otter Pine Inn to empty the safe.

  But Greeley and Azrael are already there, the old man dumping the cash into a paper bag. What happens after that, Joe thought, is up for grabs. No one knows for sure, yet, how that woman died.

  Wrong, Joe thought. Likely, by this time, the coroner has made a diagnosis, and Max Harper knows. And the tomcat smiled. Tonight was poker night. Even if Harper was on a case, he usually managed a short break. Harper said a few hands of poker helped him sort things out.

  And Joe was right. An hour later, Max Harper sat down at the table, looking tired. “If I never see another hotel employee, I’ll be happy.”

  Clyde cut the cards. Joe Grey hopped onto the table and lay down out of the way.

  Harper gave him a look, but said nothing. “Interviewing all day. Every one of them afraid they might say something to get crosswise with Patty Rose, or get her in trouble. Hard to ease them into talking. And the cause of death is still vague.”

  “Medical examiner came up with nothing?”

  “She was wearing a flat silver pendant, under her leotard. It was dented, and marked with her blood. Apparently this caused the abrasion-a hard blow to the chest. A few internal blood vessels broken. You saw the paper-maybe commotio cordis, maybe not.”

  Harper cut the cards and shoved them toward Clyde. “One of the gardeners, Larry Cruz, says he saw Alice Manning run out of the tearoom just before six this morning, before the janitors opened up. Says she hurried out, ran out of the inn into the street.”

  “Strange behavior for the contest winner. You believe him?”

  Harper shrugged. “I’ll take two cards. Cruz didn’t tell me he’s been dating one of the finalists, Gail Gantry, since she arrived. Patty Rose told me that.”

  “Gail’s the one who organized that song and dance routine? Got them connected with the festival committee?”


  “Right. Free publicity, free room at the Wanderer in return for using their photograph in the motel ads. She came around the station, asking for police support, which of course we wouldn’t give her.

  “She’s hyper,” Harper said, tossing in a chip. “Very wound up. Doesn’t seem to be on drugs, just a go-getter. Pushy.”

  Listening, Joe Grey wanted to be moving, checking out these ladies-and checking out the gardener. He lay raggedly purring, playing with a poker chip. Who knew what he might overhear from this Larry Cruz? People would say anything, in front of a simple cat.

  Chapter Four

  The evening was cool as Joe Grey crossed the village, trotting though the shops’ little front gardens and beneath the twisted oaks that shaded Molena Point’s cottages. Heading for the Wanderer Motel where the three women were staying, he saw Police Captain Max Harper parked at the curb in one of the department’s battered surveillance cars, dressed in civilian clothes, his western hat pulled down as if napping.

  Keeping to the shadows, Joe slipped into the motel patio, rolling on the warm brick paving as casually as any village tomcat out for an evening’s ramble. Then, padding into the bushes, he leaped to one windowsill and then the next, concealed by the flowering foliage, looking in beneath blinds and around curtains.

  Where female voices came from a lighted room, he peered through a crack beside the drapes and through the open window, to see one of the look-alikes pulling on a sweater. All three pretty, blond contestants were there, in various stages of dress, all such striking doubles for movie star Patty Rose that he might have been watching three vintage movies running on adjacent screens.

  The room was a mess, clothes dropped and flung on every surface, open suitcases on the floor. Of the three women, Gail Gantry was the most animated, flushed and outgoing-she looked, as Harper had said, like a go-getter. Dressed in jeans and a bra, she sat barefoot on one of the three beds, painting her toenails. “You’re wrong, Dorothy.” She glanced over at her virtual twin with the dark nail polish and thinner eyebrows. “I say, with Frances dead, Patty Rose won’t be part of the parade. Won’t have anything to do with us; we’re bad PR.”

  Dorothy picked up a wadded towel and began to wipe her sandals. She wore gray tights and a gray sweatshirt. Her voice was harsher than Gail’s. “Oh, she’ll be there. She’ll make the publicity work for her.”

  The third look-alike, Beverly Barker, watched them from where she sat at the desk putting on makeup. She seemed the only one who wasn’t a natural blonde-Joe could see the dark roots. She was dressed in a pale pink pants suit. “I don’t see how you two can act so offhand, with Frances dead. She was one of us-and she might have been murdered. I don’t see how you can go on with this cat festival, or even stay here.”

  “We have to stay,” Gail said coldly. “Last thing the cops said-stay in the village. Anyway, it’s all good exposure.”

  Beverly looked at Gail. “That’s so cold. And what if she was murdered?”

  “That’s silly. How could she have been? You read the paper. Anyway, if you’re serious about being an entertainer…”

  “We are entertainers,” Dorothy interrupted. “But this gig is a drag. And I don’t see it getting any better.”

  “It isn’t a gig, yet,” Gail said. “And it won’t be, Dorothy, if you take that attitude.”

  Dorothy tossed her towel into the corner, then rummaged in a suitcase balanced on the night stand just beneath the window where Joe Grey was crouched. He could see, beneath a silk slip among a clutter of what appeared to be bottles, the shape of a handgun. No other object he could think of would have that same configuration.

  Well, but Frances Farrow hadn’t been shot. The police weren’t looking for a gun. And there was no law that prevented Dorothy from having one, if she wasn’t a felon-there was only a law against how she was storing it. After all, she had driven down alone from Seattle. Maybe the gun made her feel safer.

  Or was Dorothy, too, involved in the thefts? Were there two sets of thieves at work, stealing from Molena Point’s small businesses, each hoping the other would be blamed for all the crimes?

  Or maybe Greeley and the black tomcat had set up these women to look guilty? Azrael and that old man would stoop to any low deed.

  Beverly smoothed the crease of her pants suit. “I think the cat festival is a sweet idea, with all the toy cats and cat-printed T-shirts in the windows, and the animal shelter bringing kitties to adopt. Just think of the cats that will find homes.”

  “Right,” Dorothy said sourly. “Patty Rose isn’t going to turn down a cause like that, she’ll be right up there on the lead float, handing out kitty treats.”

  The phone rang, and Gail picked up. “Yes?” Then her voice went soft. Turning away from her roommates, she laughed, and glanced at her watch. “Yes, that’s perfect. See you then. Me, too, honey.”

  She hung up, looking smug, tested her toenail polish and slipped on her sandals. Snatching a blue sweatshirt from the open suitcase on the floor of the closet, she pulled it on. “You ladies ready for dinner? I’m having a nice, buttery lobster.”

  “Why doesn’t your date buy you dinner?” Dorothy snapped. “That beach-bum too cheap to spring for a meal?”

  “For your information, I don’t have a date.”

  “Oh. I thought, the way you looked at your watch…”

  “Tomorrow night,” Gail said. “If it’s any of your business. I’m hungry. You coming?”

  And the three headed out the door like the best of friends, leaving Joe Grey alone on the windowsill, considering their empty room.

  He was sorely tempted. Who knew what he’d find in there, besides possibly a handgun?

  But who knew what he’d miss of the ladies’ various evening activities?

  Abandoning his urge to claw the screen open, he galloped out through the garden and along the sidewalk, dodging the feet of wandering tourists, shying away from reaching hands and from little cries of, Ooh, look at the beautiful cat. His coat is just like gray satin. Where do you suppose he’s going in such a hurry?

  When the three women turned in to the Shrimp Bowl, Joe swarmed up the trunk of an oak tree by the front window and settled among its branches, his color blending into the oak’s bark, only his white paws and nose visible. He’d barely gotten settled among the leaves when, across the street, Captain Harper’s surveillance car pulled up, out of sight of the cafe. Interesting, Joe thought, that Harper hadn’t turned this kind of duty over to one of his two detectives.

  Watching the women order, he considered slipping inside. The restaurant tables were close together, the room crowded. Who would notice a swift shadow among a room full of feet? He was about to drop out of the tree when he saw, half a block away, a black cat leap across the rooftops and vanish among the peaks. Azrael?

  Scanning the street, he did not see Azrael’s human partner. Maybe the tomcat was staking out a mark, meaning to return later with the old man. Joe was still looking for Greeley when he realized that the three women were having a heated argument.

  They argued all through dinner. What a shame, when they should be enjoying the fine lobster and broiled salmon. They were barely finished eating when Gail and Dorothy rose, both tossing some money on the table.

  They parted at the door, not speaking, swinging away in opposite directions, abandoning Beverly with the remains of her salmon and a hurt look. For roommates rehearsing a song and dance number together, these three didn’t get along too well.

  Dropping from the tree, Joe followed Gail, gliding smoothly among the tourists’ hard shoes, a twitch of excitement biting at his belly-the adrenaline rush of the hunter. Glancing back, he watched Dorothy, too, wishing Dulcie were on her trail. But no, Dulcie had been stubbornly set on hanging around Otter Pine Inn to spy on Alice Manning, a project about as productive, in Joe’s opinion, as staking out an abandoned mouse hole.

  Crossing the street behind Gail, he went up a pine tree to the roofs, his claws scrabbling bark down onto tourists’ h
eads. He didn’t see Harper’s car. He was trotting along the metal gutter above Gail, watching her saunter casually along below him when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a black tail and black haunches disappear through the window of a second floor office. Joe paused for only a moment.

  There was only one reason for the black tomcat to enter a building at night from the rooftops. He pictured old Greeley waiting somewhere on the street, out of sight, hunched up in his wrinkled leather jacket, his lock picks and drill ready to rip off another Molena Point shop. Abandoning Gail, Joe Grey headed for the open window, his ears back, his claws ready to rout the two thieves.

  Chapter Five

  Racing across a maze of village rooftops toward the window where the black tail had disappeared, Joe Grey slipped under the screen and paused, crouching on the sill. He was in the upstairs office of Charles, Ltd., Men’s Clothier. Their logo shone at him from a stack of the store’s printed boxes. Dropping to the desk, he scanned the cluttered room. He did not see Azrael.

  Most of these second floor offices led down by a narrow stair to a back stockroom that opened to the shop. In some, in locked fire files or safes, the owner kept cash on hand.

  Strange that he did not smell Azrael, smelled only the aroma of an elderly female cat. She sat on a shelf in the far corner watching him belligerently, her black tail switching-the fat black shop cat, sour-natured and reclusive, seldom venturing out of doors.

  Was that the black tail he had followed, and not Azrael?

  The old female hissed at him, leaped to the nearest desk and sprayed the wall, defiantly marking her territory. Now he could smell nothing else.

  Jumping to the floor, Joe sniffed around the stairs. He could not detect the tomcat and he heard nothing from the store below, although when Azrael and old Greeley broke into a shop they weren’t quiet-they argued in loud whispers, the old man as hard-headed as the black tomcat.